[Getorius and Arcadia 01] - The Secundus Papyrus

by Albert Noyer

  “Who were Jason and the woman he mentioned?” Getorius asked.

  “Phoebe. She performed a pantomime with him after supper. My God!” Arcadia gasped, “Jason was painting a mask labeled Smyrna when I saw him. After luring Brenos to the villa, and with Maximin away, he could have impersonated the man—thrown the abbot off guard.”

  “Actors mimic conspiracies, they don’t initiate them,” Getorius objected. “If Maximin is involved he may have had doubts of the plot’s success by early December, when no one had yet come from Autessiodurum. But even so, who’s going to file charges against the most powerful man in Ravenna? Besides, as he pointed out, trespass and theft laws favor the victim.”

  “But you thought he was responsible for your being blamed for the dissection.”

  “Arcadia, he’s undoubtedly much more conniving than I gave him credit for. Under confinement, I would have been eliminated at the will’s revelation. After that, no one would care.”

  “Yet, if something went wrong, you’d still be alive. Maximin has said he wanted you to help him get Patrician rank.” Arcadia shuddered. “Placidia was to be killed.”

  “So were you, cara,” Getorius reminded her softly. “We narrowly escaped anarchy.”

  “What will other accomplices do when there’s no revelation?”

  “The plot is exposed,” Nathaniel said to Arcadia, “but that the senator exposed it is a puzzle. Your theory, Getorius, may be correct. There’s no truth in his story of this abbot’s death, other than the man was at the senator’s villa, for some reason.”

  “With the Gallican League plan unraveling because the documents had been discovered, Maximin lost his nerve and decided to abort the conspiracy.”

  “And tried to blame both Theokritos and Aetius.”

  “Arcadia, Maximin certainly had enough time to look for the papyri inside the palace,” Getorius said. “That ‘gossip’ among palace staff is nonsense…he saw Theokritos’ results. Christ! The senator had Behan strangled and planned to seize power with the abbot. When the plot looked like it would fail, he had Brenos killed.”

  “The most important thing is that this is ended.” Arcadia turned to Nathaniel. “And you needn’t worry about the forgeries, they’ll not see the light of day. Tell Rabbi Zadok to inform your men that there’s no danger to them.”

  The words were still a woman’s riddle, but Nathaniel nodded and stood up to go back to the Judean quarter.

  After he left, Arcadia said, “I…I feel so drained by what we just heard, but I suppose we’d better get ready to attend the vigil service.”

  “I understand, cara.” Getorius pulled his wife into an embrace and kissed away the glistening tears at the corner of her eyes. “Have Silvia help you. It isn’t too cold out, but wear a woolen tunic and fairly heavy cape.”

  As Getorius put on wool hose and a clean tunic, he decided to leave things as they were and not question his wife any further about what she had done with the golden case and the two papyri. What he had guessed about her actions was an ironic end to the entire affair. However incomplete the details might be, the evening’s events had exposed the Gallican conspiracy. Maximin was undoubtedly involved with Smyrna as the abbot’s contact, might even be the conspirator himself, yet there was no way to prove it. As he pointed out, his guards would testify that the abbot must have accidentally fallen in the act of manifest theft, while trespassing on a senatorial estate. They would cite the golden rooster clutched in his hand. It’s a ridiculous charge, but the law is on the senator’s side. And after Bishop Chrysologos has read the Gallican charter, he’ll also condemn the fanatical abbot who wanted to implement his twisted interpretation of John’s apocalyptic vision. Chrysologos won’t inquire too closely into Brenos’ death and will probably leave out the details in his report to Bishop Germanus at Autessiodurum.

  Chapter twenty-seven

  When Getorius and Arcadia left their villa to walk to the Basilica Ursiana for the Nativity service, the snowy drizzle had stopped. A southwest breeze ruffled the surface of the remaining street puddles, and the night air smelled of smoke from bonfires burning throughout Ravenna to celebrate the birth of the man who had called himself the Light of the World.

  The low, scudding clouds and rippling sheets of water were tinted a pale orange hue by the celebration flames. In the countryside, beyond the city walls, Getorius imagined that a few pagan worshippers tended their own blazes in secret, to lure back the sun god Helios—or Belenos as the Celts called him, or Tiwaz, the Germani—from his southward wandering.

  Brisios saw himself as a self-declared guard and walked ahead of his master and mistress on the way to the cathedral. Childibert and Agrica followed a few steps behind, with Silvia and young Primus lagging further back. Most citizens went on foot, but a few oldsters were being carried in litter chairs. Maximin’s black carriage clattered past on the Via Honorius, along with a few other rigs that belonged to senators and palace officials. Bishop Chrysologos had urged that people walk to the basilica, in imitation of the shepherds who had journeyed to see the newborn child in Bethlehem, four hundred and thirty-nine years earlier.

  At the basilica, Arcadia spotted Publius Maximin’s carriage on the torch-lit front plaza, with a shadowy form hunched on the seat.

  “It’s too dark to recognize the driver,” she said, “but it’s probably that mute.”

  “I’d like to be sure that the senator actually did show the Gallican charter to Galla Placidia. Let’s go inside. Perhaps we can ask him.”

  The vast interior of the Ursiana was dimly lit. The altar was illuminated solely with four tall candles on stands, although many more unlighted lamps and candles were clustered nearby. The five-aisled cathedral had been dedicated to the Resurrection of Christ, as had, coincidentally, Ravenna’s older Arian church. To distinguish between the two, Nicene Christians referred to their church by the name of its late founder, Archbishop Ursicinus.

  Inside the nave, men and women mingled freely and chatted with each other, unlike churches in the east, where the congregation was separated by an iron railing—men on the right and women on the left. Yet even here not everyone was treated with the equality the Apostle Paul had envisioned: members of the imperial retinue stood apart, with chairs being available only for that family. A pregnant Eudoxia was already seated, with a nursemaid standing next to the Augusta, rocking her first baby. Valentinian was in whispered conversation with his steward Heraclius. The emperor’s bodyguards, Optila and Thraustila, lurked nearby in the shadows of the nave arcade.

  Galla Placidia, dressed in the magnificent tunic she had worn at her republican dinner, but with a silk veil replacing the Visigoth crown, knelt in prayer on the bottom step of the altar platform.

  To one side, away from everyone, Flavius Aetius talked with a blonde woman, whom Getorius assumed was Pelagia, his Germanic wife.

  Toga-clad senators and palace officials also conversed in separate groups, but Maximin was not among them.

  “The only one I recognize is Protasius,” Getorius said to Arcadia, “that records clerk we dealt with before going to Classis.”

  “Where?”

  “Over to the right. The man is talking to someone who looks like he might be his assistant.”

  “He’s not a clerk,” Senator Maximin remarked, appearing from behind a marble column. He grasped Arcadia’s shoulders in a light embrace. “Pax Christi, my dear. Surgeon, I must thank you. Mother is here, sitting up front in that wheeled chair you suggested she have made. You’ve given her new hope.”

  “I’m pleased, Senator.”

  “That man you see with Protasius is Leudovald. He’s an interrogator in the judicial magistrate’s office. He would have questioned you if the…ah…if what you had been accused of had been a civil concern, not the bishop’s.”

  “Senator, what was Placidia’s response to the Gallican charter?” Getorius asked.

  “The Empress Mother took the abbot’s case.”

  “And?”

 
“I’m not privy to what she does… Oh, Senator Justin just came in. I must talk to him about his visit to Constantinople.”

  After Maximin hurried away, Getorius turned to his wife. “As you said, Arcadia, the man is smooth. He stayed long enough to tell us that the Gothic Queen has the charter, but nothing about her reaction or intention.”

  “She wanted the papyrus burned. She might—” Arcadia stopped when she saw a procession of churchmen filing out from the vesting room. “There’s Bishop Chrysologos. He’s ready to start the service.”

  Ravenna’s seven senior deacons, holding lighted candles, preceded the bishop. Five presbyters followed Tranquillus, who walked ahead holding aloft a codex of Jerome’s Latin Testaments.

  The clergymen began to sing an antiphonal psalm, whose words were gradually picked up by some members of the congregation.

  “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear?

  The Lord is the refuge of my life; of whom should I go in dread?

  When evildoers close in on me to devour me, it is my enemies, my assailants, who stumble and fall.”

  “Not a very celebratory hymn,” Getorius whispered to Arcadia, “but then the Vandal capture of Carthage has dampened everyone’s morale.”

  “What could have happened if we hadn’t discovered the papyri would have been much worse.” Arcadia shuddered and grasped his arm tightly. “I’m so nervous, Getorius. My stomach is totally out of balance.”

  “Everything will be fine, cara,” Getorius reassured her, not entirely convinced. The procession wound its way to the apse, as the final verse of the psalm echoed in throughout the nave.

  “Wait for the Lord, be strong, take courage and wait for the Lord.”

  Deacons and presbyters seated themselves on marble benches set around the altar. Bishop Chrysologos moved behind the table, raised his hands to a prayer position, and intoned a greeting to the congregation.

  “Dominus vobiscum. The Lord be with you.”

  “And with your spirit,” the people responded.

  Tranquillus knelt before the altar platform and chanted, “Introibo ad altare Dei…I will go unto the altar of God.”

  The rite continued with the bishop asking God’s blessings on the catechumens, and then with petitions for the sick, the imprisoned, slaves condemned to penal labor, and finally for deliverance from further depredations by the Vandals.

  A deacon went to the marble pulpit to read from the prophet Isaiah.

  “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.”

  One by one the other deacons arose and held their flaming wicks down to light the oil lamps and other candles until, by the end of the reading, the apse area was ablaze with light.

  “I’ve been imagining Brenos here if we hadn’t discovered the papyrus,” Arcadia leaned over to whisper to Getorius. “I wonder at what point in the readings he intended to reveal the will?”

  “The prophecy had to do with a gospel of John. It would make sense if the first reading were taken from an epistle of Peter’s, since the letter was forged to look like it came from the Apostle. Brenos probably would have selected the texts to reinforce his revelation of the will, then, in a homily, explained the role of his Gallicans as its protectors and executors.”

  The deacon at the pulpit announced a reading from a part of Peter’s second letter, which he said dealt with both prophecy and the Hebrew people.

  Getorius felt uneasy and whispered to Arcadia, “If Brenos recruited clergy other than Archdeacon Renatus to his Gallicans…” His thought was too disturbing to finish.

  “But first note this,” the deacon read from the letter, “no one can interpret any prophecy of Scripture by himself. For it was not through any human whim that men prophesied of old. Men indeed they were, yet impelled by the Holy Spirit, they spoke the words of God.

  “But the Hebrews had false prophets as well as true, and you likewise will have false teachers among you. They will import dissenters, disowning the very Master who brought them, and bringing swift disaster on their own heads.”

  “That can’t be the reading the abbot would have chosen,” Getorius whispered. “It refutes his own case for believing his prophecy. Who could have…?” He glanced toward Galla Placidia. She had been looking at him, and now turned away. Was it a trick of the light, or was her mouth curved in the trace of a smile? “The Gothic Queen…”

  Arcadia pulled at his sleeve. “Getorius, what are you muttering about? Sing the response.”

  “A holy day has dawned upon us.

  Come you nations, and adore the Lord, Today a great light has come upon the earth.’”

  Tranquillus came to the pulpit to announce that the Nativity reading would be taken from the Testament of John, which explained the mystery of the Father’s love as revealed in Jesus.

  “In the beginning the Logos, the Word, was, and the Word was with God…”

  The text was familiar; both Getorius and his wife had read and heard it many times. Now both could anticipate the point at which Brenos would have suddenly held up the Secundus Papyrus and announced that the prophecy of Christ’s immeasurable love had been fulfilled: “So the Word became flesh and resided among us, and we had a view of his glory, a glory such as belongs to an only-begotten son from a Father; and he was full of undeserved kindness and love.”

  The abbot would then have read the terms of the Nazarene’s will as ‘proof’ of the love John mentioned. In the pandemonium that would have followed the first stunned silence, it was conceivable that Ravenna’s Judean quarter would have been attacked that same night by angry protesters.

  The service ended with Bishop Chrysologos escorting the imperial family out through a side entrance. Maximin was lost in the crowd of officials. When Getorius and Arcadia came out the front entrance with the other people, the senator’s carriage was gone.

  The couple walked in silence to the corner of the Via Basilicae and the Honorius, and Arcadia took her husband’s arm. “Is the nightmare over, Getorius?”

  He shrugged. “You were probably right in thinking that Galla Placidia has burned the Gallican charter, and Theokritos’ test results.”

  “That still bothers me.”

  “What?”

  “Theokritos. Do you think he truly believed the will was genuine? I…I’d come to like him.”

  “I didn’t read his conclusions, but for the tests he used papyrus scraps that were the same age. A monastic forger would have access to similar manuscript pages. While I was detained, I did some research on that Gnostic amulet Theokritos wore. Abraxas was the name of an armed rooster figure, with serpents for legs…some kind of protective pagan daemon. The cock was sacred to the sun god because he greeted dawn and banished the evil forces of the night.”

  “Theokritos was too intelligent to believe all that,” Arcadia retorted. “I think the amulet was just a pagan curiosity for him.”

  “I guess I’d like to believe that he was impartial in judging the authenticity of what he called his Secundus Papyrus.”

  “A church council would have eventually ruled against it, wouldn’t it?”

  “Probably, but these Gallicans might have consolidated their power by then…even convinced enough believers on the council to overrule the truth.”

  Arcadia shuddered at the possibility, and drew her cape closer around her body. “I’m frightened that there might have been so many involved. Will they—or someone—try something like this again?”

  “You might as well ask if there’ll be sick people at the clinic tomorrow. Some people’s need for power is as unexplainable as…as why some wounds heal and other don’t.”

  After walking along the Honorius toward their villa for a time, Arcadia asked, “Will we see Rabbi Zadok again?”

  “I’m not sure. He’ll have to deal with the anti-Judean laws Nathaniel mentioned. I just wish he had told me more about the murders he and my father solved.”

  “
His mind was on dealing with the effects the forged will would have on his people if it were released.”

  “I suppose.”

  When Getorius guided Arcadia around street puddles across from the old forum, she looked over at the temple of Fortuna. The pagan building was dark in contrast to the Ursiana, which had been brightly lit with lamps and candles, but nearby bonfires brought a golden glint to the bronze letters of the inscription.

  “Divine Fortune, you—and Saint Cosmas—did smile on me,” Arcadia murmured.

  “What did you say, cara?”

  She squeezed her husband’s arm more tightly. “Nothing, really.”

  At the corner of the Via Theodosius, Getorius had paused to watch children playing around fires in the marketplace, when he heard a distant but familiar sound.

  “Did you hear that?” he asked Arcadia.

  “What, Getorius?”

  “I’d swear on Aesculapius that I just heard a rooster announcing the dawn. It must be the reflection from all the fires on the low clouds making it mistake the time of day.”

  “The false dawn of another deceiver.” Arcadia laughed and pulled Getorius across the street, toward their villa. “It may be late, but I’m going to get that copy of Ovid out again so we can read parts of it together.”

  “In the bathhouse pool?”

  “Maybe not there, at least not tonight. But I do feel safe inside that warm little octagonal universe,” Arcadia admitted. “That day we examined Behan—after we came home and made love in the pool—I had this uneasy feeling, a kind of premonition that Ravenna was not as secure as it seemed behind its walls and swamps. They might keep barbarians out, but that night I imagined enemies inside the city who could destroy our world.”

  “You were right, cara. Those Gallicans weren’t imaginary foes.”

  “That’s what’s so frightening.”

  Getorius guided his wife around the corner of their street. “Senator Maximin’s mother admitted to me that she worried because he had become too ambitious. If the senator was part of the Gallican League, he was clever enough not to go down with them. Yet he may try something else.”